1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to a reflective object, which is characterized that: the color layer is not contacted with the optical components thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
Reflective objects and materials thereof have been developed with higher wash resistance and various colors and patterns as time goes by. Reflective objects are commonly used in clothes, waistcoats, hats, shoes or exterior decoration of vehicles to provide traffic safety between pedestrians and vehicles, and are also used in huge advertisement signboards, posters or traffic signs for warnings or safety reminders.
Traditional method for reflective objects production is to obtain an adhesive layer and a color layer at the same time. That is, an adhesive is pre-mixed with inks and coated onto a substrate to form a layer structure. Then, optical components and a reflective layer are formed sequentially. In order to flatten said layer structure of the reflective objects made by said method, it requires great amount of adhesives and inks to fill up the irregular surface of the optical components (usually are in the shape of spheres such as glass beads). The usage of the inks is usually more than 30 g/m2, and reflection effects of the reflective objects are reduced as the optical components and the reflective layer inside are sheltered by such amount of inks resulting in bad light transmittance and reflection.
Another traditional producing method for reflective objects is to obtain an adhesive layer and a color layer separately. First, an adhesive layer embedded with optical components is prepared. The adhesive is used to fix said optical components, and the arrangement of said optical components is in an “exposed” manner; which means, said optical components is partially embedded inside said adhesive. Then, a color layer composed of inks is prepared onto the surface of the optical components, which is not covered by said adhesive. Since the surface of the optical components (usually are in the shape of spheres such as glass beads) which is contacting with the inks is non-flat and with several sphere projections, it required great amount of inks to form a flat and uniform color layer in the producing procedures. However, reflective effects of the reflective objects are reduced as the reflective layer inside are sheltered by such great amount of inks resulting in bad light transmittance and reflection.
The present invention intends to modify the producing procedures; that is, to reduce the amount of the inks of the color layer (i.e. reduce the coverage of the reflective layer) for increasing the reflection effects of the reflective objects by totally embedding the optical components into the adhesive layer and cover the surface of the optical components by adhesives.